Šilutė 1942

Postmark of Heydekrug March 1942

Sender's address: Kolleschen bei Jonaten Kreis Heydekrug (Ostpr.)

It has been long since I have posted something here the last time I guess.. I'm planning to slowly come back on track!

Anyway.. So, here is a registered cover sent in 1942 from Heydekrug (today Šilutė, Lithuania) to Kassel in mainland Germany. 1942 is in the middle of WWII as we all know and Heydekrug / Šilutė  has been re-annexed by Germany along with the rest of Memelland. I guess the followers of this blog know that but let me mention it just in case if you happened to be new to this blog..

The sender's address is in Kolleschen (previously called Kolletzischken) b. Jonaten, a small village not far from the narrow-gauge line Heydekrug - Jonathen (or Jonaten). I wonder if the sender was working or just happened to be in Heydekrug to send this letter because there were closer post offices from where he was living, notably Jonathen.
I bought this cover at Yahoo Japan with a ridiculous price of 500 JPY (4.50USD or 4.30EUR) along with a Tilsit and a Skaisgirren cover (which I'm not going to post here because those are not part of Lithuania but part of present Russia) buried among hundreds of German covers. Regular dealers don't usually notice Memelland covers unless Memel stamps are used on it.

Kulėšai 1918

My latest acquisition Kolletzischken 1918

This week I felt so lucky to be able to find a postmark of Kolletzischken (now Kulėšai, Lithuania) 1918 buried among thousands of other Germania stamps. According to Memelgebiet section in Michel Spezial, Kolletzischken is one of "postmark collector friendly" post office that had only one type of postmark which is the one you see on the above scan. Memelgebiet post offices usually made new postmark when it went under French administration but the one in Kolletzischken apparently did not care or was in lack of funds and kept using the old pre-Memelgebiet ones.

the same postmark used in 1923 during the Lithuanian administration

As far as I know there is only one postmark that preceded this one which has probably been used in the second half of the 1850's by the Prussian postal authority, I have never seen it yet but it is spelled Koletzischken with a single "L".
This post office was later closed down on January 1924 and neither the Lithuanian nor the 1939 German re-annexation administration ever reopened it.

Cancellations of Memelgebiet/Memel district - 06

Wischwill (now Viešvilė)

Kolletzischken/Kolleschen (now Kulėšai)

Dawillen (now Dovilai)

Railway post: Insterburg (Russia, Chernyakhovsk)-Memel (Klaipėda)

Railway post: Pogegen (Pagėgiai)-Schmalleningken (Smaleninkai)